TheHerbert N. Straus House is a largetown house at 9 East 71st Street, just east ofFifth Avenue, on theUpper East Side ofManhattan in New York City. The exterior was designed byHorace Trumbauer,[1] and completed in 1932. A roof extension was added in 1977.[2] The size of the house was believed to be 21,000 square feet (2,000 m2) in the late 1980s, and by 2003 had been enlarged to 51,000 square feet (4,700 m2), spread over nine floors.[3][4] A 15-foot-high (4.6 m) oak door and large arched windows are distinctive features of thelimestone exterior.[4] A heated sidewalk is located in front of the house.[5]
Vicky Ward in 2003 described the house as "the crown jewel of the city's residential town houses ... it sits on—or, rather, commands—the block of 71st Street between Fifth andMadison Avenues. Almost ludicrously out of proportion with its four- and five-story neighbors, it seems more like an institution than a house" and that it was believed to be the largest private residence in Manhattan.[4] The house's 2008property tax bill was the fourth highest for a single residence in New York City.[6] In 2019 it was valued at $77 million by theUnited States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and at $56 million by theNew York City Department of Finance.[6]
Herbert Straus, the sixth of seven children born toIsidor andIda Straus (co-owners of retailersR. H. Macy & Co.), never lived in the house, and work on the house was canceled shortly before Straus's death in 1933.[2] Straus's heirs never completed work on the house due to the high cost of property taxes.[7] It was unfinished in 1944 when it was donated by Straus' sons to theArchdiocese of New York for a hospital.[8][6]
TheBirch Wathen School occupied the house from 1962 until 1989,[6][2] when it was purchased for $13.2 million by the billionaire businessmanLeslie Wexner. It was featured in the December 1995 edition ofArchitectural Digest.[5] The interior of the house was designed under Wexner byJohn Stefanidis and remodelled by the architectThierry Despont.[5]
Jeffrey Epstein moved into the house in 1995, at which time he claimed to own it, although its registered ownership changed in 2011 from atrust connected to both Wexner and Epstein to a trust controlled by Epstein.[6][5][3][4]
Vicky Ward visited Epstein at the house for "The Talented Mr Epstein", her 2003 profile inVanity Fair magazine.[4] Ward wrote that she felt that upon entering the house "you feel you have stumbled into someone’s privateXanadu. This is no mere rich person's home, but a high-walled, eclectic, imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries". Rows of 'individually framed eyeballs' manufactured for injured English soldiers decorated the entrance hall along with a 'twice-life-size sculpture of a naked African warrior'. A room described as a "leather room" hadleopard print chairs with walls decorated in "cordovan-colored fabric". A large 'Oriental fantasy of a woman holding anopium pipe and caressing a snarling lionskin' hung on the walls.[4]
A large office spanned the width of the house, decorated with a largePersian rug alongside '18th-century black lacquered Portuguese cabinets' and a desk that belonged to the bankerJ. P. Morgan. A copy ofJustine, orThe Misfortunes of Virtue by theMarquis de Sade, which tells the tale of the sexually abused 12-year old protagonist of the novel, was on the desk. ASteinway grand piano was surmounted by a stuffed black poodle. Epstein told Ward that "No decorator would ever tell you to do that ... But I want people to think what it means to stuff a dog".[4] The French decoratorAlberto Pinto was responsible for much of the interior.[4] The house has a bathroom lined in lead withclosed-circuit television.[3]
TheNew York City Police Department (NYPD) authorities andFBI agents raided the house in July 2019 as part of a federal investigation intosex trafficking allegations against Epstein.[7]
In March 2021, former Goldman Sachs executive Michael Daffey purchased the home for $51 million,[9][10] with proceeds from the sale going to the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program.[11] Daffey secured a $30.6 million loan fromCitigroup to purchase the home[12] and announced plans to renovate the house.[10] The renovation was completed in 2025.[13]
Last month he and his brothers [...] donated the unfinished mansion of Herbert N. Straus at 9 East 71st Street to the Roman Catholic Bishropic of New York.
Media related toHerbert N. Straus House at Wikimedia Commons
40°46′18″N73°58′00″W / 40.771604°N 73.9665989°W /40.771604; -73.9665989